Canadian governments go to telecoms for users information 1.2 million times a year

Canadian internet and telephone companies are asked to provide the personal information of their customers more than a million times every year, a one-time disclosure to the Office of the privacy commissioner reveals.

A document filed with the office in 2011 – released publicly on Tuesday – reveals that government authorities ask telecom companies for an average of 1,193,630 disclosures every year. The aggregated disclosure provided to the office summarized the findings of nine, unknown telecom companies. It is unknown how many cases involved a warrant.

Three companies told the Office that represented the disclosure of 784,756 users or accounts.

According to the document, the telecom companies routinely seek compensation for complying with the governments’ disclosure requests, including the cost of warrants, and labour and facilities used to intercept information.

Both NDP and Liberal opposition leaders weighed in after question period, saying they hope the government is doing enough to protect Canadians’ privacy.

“I certainly hope that we will see the government is doing all it can to protect Canadians security,” Liberal leader Justin Trudeau told reporters.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said the 1 million number is “absolutely incredible” and is something the New Democrats will be following-up on.

“I find that there is no way plausibly to explain a million pieces of personal information being transferred to the government by telecom companies. So, we are going to try to get to the bottom of it. That’s all we can do at this stage,” he said.

Despite the findings, the privacy commissioner says she has no idea how often telecom companies share their consumer’s personal information.

After an appearance before the Senate committee on transportation and communications Tuesday, Interim Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier said cell phone and internet companies are refusing to release details on the practice.

“We have sought out information from the telecoms to find out and they have given us very general comments,” she said.

Bernier, and a legal counsel from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, testified as part of the Senate committee’s study on Bell Canada’s new privacy rules. The telecom giant’s updated policy allowed the company to gather information about users’ television and internet habits to better inform and target their advertising campaigns.

Representatives from Bell Canada are scheduled to testify at the committee’s next meeting, though none will be able to answer direct questions about how they use customer data due to the privacy commissioner’s on-going investigation.

The investigation, launched last October after receiving 170 complaints about Bell Canada’s new policies, is expected to be completed by the end of this year, Bernier told reporters.

The changing technological industry, Bernier told the senators, is a hurdle for Canadian companies trying to be competitive in a dog-eat-dog sector. With traditional advertising revenue plummeting, companies, including Google, Facebook and Bell, are increasingly using “targeted advertising” to generate more revenue.

“The more targeted the advertisement is, the more lucrative the advertisement is,” she said, pointing to Google as an example. The Silicon Valley company made 2.6 times more revenue from targeted advertising than regular ads last year, Bernier stated.

“There is a real economic incentive to use personal information for targeted advertising,” she added.

Consumers at risk

The concerning trend of sharing personal data obtained online creates an imbalance of power between the consumer and the company, Bernier stressed. Consumers often have a limited knowledge of a product and how a company plans to use their information.

This imbalance, she said, can only be resolved if the regulator has more powers, something Bill S-4, the Digital Privacy Act, accomplishes.

“It gives us one year, rather than 45 days to send an investigation to the courts, and that is much more appropriate because the issues that we deal with are often very complex,” she said.

“It also expands our power to name things in the public interest and that helps us make a difference.”

In addition to more power, Bernier’s office is pushing the government to create a legal framework that would require telecom companies to disclose how often personal information is used or shared without a warrant.

Current legislation allow private companies to share information with the police and government without requiring a warrant, something the privacy commissioner wants modified.

While there are emergency situations when information is needed before a court can issue a warrant, Bernier believes companies should be forced to better inform Canadians on the controversial topic.

“In relation to publishing statistics on warrantless, already it would be a matter of transparency, it would give a form of oversight by empowering citizens to see what the scope of the phenomenon is,” she said.

That recommendation was part of a Special Report tabled in late January, which the government has yet to respond to.

“Nope. We have not heard anything back,” Bernier said Tuesday, three months after the report was made public.

The privacy commissioner’s office is hoping to release a series of guidelines in May on how private companies can best protect a consumer’s privacy and ensure that opt-out and opt-in options are “meaningful.” Terms and conditions, Bernier suggested, should be written for the target audience, and device.

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